Drakengard 3 the Spoil-Sport
Playing games throughout our lives, it is likely we have all run into a “spoil-sport”. Perhaps the spoilsport we ran into did not want to play, or that person made a mockery of the game itself; a spoil-sport comes in many different variations. Not to be confused with an outright cheater, the spoil-sport can create a hostile and troubled game play experience for all those involved. The spoil-sport believes they are above the rules; however, they can also be seen as “innovators”, “prophets”, “heretics” (Huzinga, 1944). To bend the play experience to their will is indeed disruptive, but sometimes it can lead to a completely new way of play or a new game itself. How can a game be its own spoilsport but also hold value in the furthering of the medium?
Huzinga explains in Homo Ludens “The player who trespasses against the rules or ignores them is a ‘spoil-sport’. The spoil-sport is not the same as the false player, the cheat; for the latter pretends to be playing the game and, on the face of it, still acknowledges the magic circle. It is curious to note how much more lenient society is to the cheat than to the spoil-sport. This is because the spoil-sport shatters the play-world itself.”
Drakengard 3 is a game released in 2013 by developer Access Games (best known for Deadly Premonition) and published by Square Enix. Players control an “intoner” (a kind of musical death and sex goddess) named Zero and her dragon Mikael. Drakengard 3 had a troubled development cycle which shows in the final product. The framerate drops within curated cutscenes, the music drowns out the snarky dialogue, the battle system is simply button mashing most of the time and playing games with the AI to cheat the unfair death mechanics, there are many parts of the game that are simply untextured, and the final boss is unbeatable for most players. Drakengard 3, through being an unfinished and unpolished demo, sadly becomes its own spoil-sport. From the lamenting of Yoko Taro, the game’s director and designer, he seemed to know it would be its own undoing. After playing the game, Taro says “It’s not Drakengard or Nier,” said creative director Yoko Taro. “If you’re expecting that, you’ll be disappointed.” This only makes sense in the context of his disappointment with the way development was going. The game itself does follow a lot of the themes of Drakengard and Nier but lacks the over all polish to effectively deliver its message to a wide range of viewers beyond hardcore fans and those who know Taro’s niche who will seek out any and all content there is to be found.
Games, as an emerging art form, can look back on other media before them. Movies and theatre, in the ways they tell stories are a good place to begin, as they were also subjected to the argument of “Is it art?”. In the book It’s Only a Movie! Haberski discusses the histories of movies and more relevantly their aesthetics. With the mainstream “accepting” this new art form, there is a dark flipside in which the expectation of what the movie, game, theatre, etc “should be” becomes more prominent in discussions. Haberski references the flatly named “Is It Art?” editorial within his book that breaks this down further “At first, those ‘nursed in the traditions of the older arts rose in denunciation,’ but soon ‘voices of authority… were gradually raised in … defense’ of motion pictures. The creation and application of a movie aesthetic had begun to seem reasonable to those who initially doubted the worth of film. ‘Certain aesthetic effects had to be granted as belonging uniquely to the art of motion pictures.’” The same can be said for games; whether admitting to it or not, a normal player most likely has reference points and ideas of what a video game might be as it has become a more accepted art form. When the player boots up a game and it is not what they had expected, an emotional reaction is had, whether that be good or bad. This presents a problem for avant garde (or perhaps spoil-sport) game designers wishing to break from this mold. To the average player, the unexpected may just come off as “weird,” “strange,” and perhaps something at which to poke fun Perhaps it just goes against their ideas of what a game’s aesthetic ought to be. “High art” can seem unapproachable, which is why in It’s Only A Movie! Haberski speaks of dramatist Max Reinhardt and the value of the “democratized space” of the movies. Haberski writes “Shakespeare had ‘created an entire world… he also created it for the entire world.’ In recent times, Reinhardt believed the theater had become inaccessible to most people and that the movies had ‘democratized the auditorium, extending to every spectator the equal privilege of the eye.’” Finding a middle ground between this inaccesisble and accessible space for the spoil-sport game designer is a slippery slope between inspiration and alienation.
Art is always changing, subjective, and open to interpretation. Time is the greatest factor in these discussions, as it seems to be the factor that changes our opinion. A game that seems broken in the present could be an inspiration for an accepted aesthetic choice down the line. “Veblen’s 1906 review of historical processes, Isham states that the thread of art is continually “broken.” Aesthetic theory “has continually deserted one set of models to follow another, retaining at each change hardly any tradition of its former ideals.” Broken or smooth, whatever the means by which American art had reached its “present” phase, it was and would continue to be at a disadvantage in terms of time-ruled processes.” Within this framework I think it could be argued by some that the brokenness is a part of the spoil-sport game itself, adding to its overall aesthetics, once again for better or for worse.
Taro states in an interview with Playstation “As the hardware improves, it allows for more functions and a greater range of expression, at least that’s what I thought would happen. But there’s actually quite a bit of limitation. I’ve felt for a long time there was not enough presentation or expression that was “acceptable”…. So say you came up with the idea to have a $60 game that ends in three minutes. But that’s not going to happen. I don’t know how to phrase this, but its like an invisible wall you can’t breach. Those three minutes could be the most beautiful three minutes ever made, but there are societal demands that prohibit you from making such a game.” Taro knows that the game he has made is not what he had intended, but he also acknowledges that it could be something of value if it was a different format. However, this format is not universally acknowledged as acceptable, and Drakengard 3 becomes its own spoil-sport — not on purpose, but because of a troubled development and technical problems.
Drakengard 3 is by no means a perfect game; most would say that it’s not a good game. Nier had been a cult success, but Drakengard 3 was a stumble. There are elements of storytelling and design that are simply the beginnings of something that was never quite finished. Taro went on to take these ideas from Drakengard 3 to his next and most well known game, Nier: Automata, which in its own ways is indeed another spoil-sport, but does it sleekly and stylishly while foregrounding the subversion of the genre. He was finally given a solid team at Platinum to give these titles the finesse they deserved. Looking deeply into a game like Drakengard 3 can reveal trials and tribulations future developers can take with them into making their own spoil-sport games that innovate instead of infuriate.
Works Cited
Banta, Martha. One True Theory and the Quest for an American Aesthetic Book. Yale University Press, 2007, pp. 1–2, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vm6d2.7. Accessed 17 Oct. 2018.
Haberski, Raymond J. It’s Only a Movie! University Press of Kentucky, 2001, pp. 1–2, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt130jsbv.7. Accessed 17 Oct. 2018.
Huizinga, Jonathan. Homo Ludens. Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1949, pp. 16–29.
Romano, Sal. “Drakengard 3 announced for PlayStation 3.” Gematsu, 12 Mar. 2013, gematsu.com/2013/03/drakengard-3-announced-for-playstation-3. Accessed 21 Oct. 2018.
Taro, Yoko. 20 May 2014. , www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD6xCLlF5dY&feature=youtu.be. Accessed 17 Oct. 2018.